No QT - how big a risk?

[Shan85]

Hi guys.. I am new to the hobby. Been doing loads of reading. Setup a 75G tank 2 months back. Cycled nicely. I have added a few fish to the tank past few weeks.. Green chromi pair and occe pair.. 10 days apart. Throughout parameters were good. Zero for everything and salinity at 1.025.

My concern is that I did not quarantine the fish. I just bought them from LFS and added after drip acclimation (2 hour dripping). Since I did not have a QT I picked up fish which were at te LFS for atleast a month and eating well. Is this enough of a quarantine even if I didn't do it?

Am I at risk of introducing ich in the tank?

I don't have any corals in the tank or inverts.. Just two turbos. Is there something I can do? :s

 

[HumbleFish]

It's not a matter of IF you'll introduce ich, but WHEN. But some people choose to just "manage" that, with varying degrees of success. However, if you are unlucky enough to get marine velvet in your tank, then you are likely looking at a wipe out. I would suggest reading some posts in the fish disease section of this forum.

 

[ViktorVaughn]

I learned the lesson the hard way when I started up. No quarantine tank for the first 4 months/5 fish and all was going well. Introduced my last fish I bought from Petco which either didn't show signs of Ich or I missed it. Two days later the new fish was covered in it which quickly spread to the rest of my tank and killed off all but one fish, my Bangaii Cardinal which I still have with me. I was devastated and left my tank fallow for 10 weeks which was a constant reminder of my mistake.

I set up a quarantine tank soon after and left it running for 3 months after all new fish were treated and observed in the QT and added to the DT. I wanted to have a hospital tank running for a while in case any new issues popped up. If I would have done it right from the start, I could have saved a ton of money, time, and heartache.

 

[sponger0]

Yup....if someone gets velvet, it can wipe out all the fish in 48 hrs or less.

I would never just drop a fish in again. QT everytime. Its just not worth it. Fish dying. No treatment can be used in main display. Have to catch fish to now treat.

Then you get to look at a fishless tank for 3 months lol.

Its just not worth it.

 

[jrozzi]

usually they will show it with in a couple days of being introduced into your new tank (due to the stress). But I agree its not if its when.

 

[Shan85]

So the ich will appear regardless?

Does this mean every fish gets ich in the QT? Isn't the quarantine period to make sure the fish is ich free and eating well?

 

[m0nkie]

No no... not all fish get ich.. but if it does in QT, it's alot easier to get rid of it.. also prevents your DT from getting infected..

 

[DavidinGA]

Ich isn't a concern for a mature tank imo (I don't qt and have 20+ fish and ich has been in the tank. There's even a powder blue in there who's fine now that my tank has matured)

Velvet is another story though....

 

[HumbleFish]

The problem with ich is a fish can have it, but symptoms can be very subtle. You may not see visible symptoms (i.e. white dots) on the skin, because the parasite can sustain itself by eating gill tissue. In this case, all you may notice is the fish twitching or rubbing because his gills are bothering him. Or nothing at all if the infestation is light. Gill flukes (worms) are the same way; they mostly harbor in the gills - out of sight.

This is why I just assume every fish I buy has ich & flukes, and treat prophylactically. Brook, Velvet, Uronema and most other diseases have very obvious symptoms.

 

[jrozzi]

The idea of a QT is to identify if the fish does in fact have any type of sickness before placing it your display tank, and if it does in fact have ich or anything else you can treat it with medications that would harm other things in your display tank. We didn't mean that's ich is absolutely going to show up in your tank...If you don't have it now and you don't add any other fish odds aren't you will never see it. Some say that ich is present in all marine environments, it just needs that right host to take over such as a stressed out fish who was just introduced to a new aquarium. Some fish are much more susceptible to ich such as tangs. Having a QT will save you a lot of trouble in the long run pretty much the bottom line.

 

[Shan85]

Thanks for te clarification guys .. I was worried there for a bit. I couldn't quarantine my fish because there's not much space in my apartment.. So my first precaution was to make sure the LFS had then for atleast one month. Figured this would be enough of a quarantine period.

I'll not add anything for the next 2 months. Get a QT (beg my wife lol). Cycle it and hope fish in my DT don't fall sick.

 

[Linkblaze]

I did QT when I started. Kept killing fish. Now I don't QT at all. I try to buy from more respected, trustworthy fishes stores with clean systems, but that doesn't mean I couldn't still get an outbreak. As such, I stick to inexpensive fish...if I get a wipe out I'm out maybe a hundred bucks. Sounds extreme, but as I said...I killed them more often then not in QT.

 

[Sk8r]

Acclimation done for over 30 minutes can kill. In a local situation, lack of aeration; in a shipping situation, accumulated ammonium from respiration and poo changes to lethal ammonia as bag opening releases accumulated co2.

The whole deal is salinity. Get a refractometer. If salinity matches with .001, no acclimation is needed.

Not all fish come in with ich. If you were lucky, bless your lucky stars and qt the next!

And don't acclimate unless you NEED to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[dkeller_nc]

And...making sure the fish was at the LFS for a month before you bought it is likely to increase the chance of introducing ich into your system.

Most LFS cannot by the very nature of their business quarantine fish for the required period of time to ensure that ich and other parasites don't get into their tanks. So they control it by running lowered salinity (typically 1.016 for fish), running huge industrial UV sterilizers, and just accepting a certain percentage of livestock losses.

And, the fish importation business is now highly consolidated to just a few large firms, which means that most wild-caught fish are "exposed" to the same large saltwater systems. This is a situation that invites ich, amyloodinium and other diseases.

The only large business that I know of that quarantines, acclimates and prophylactically treats all fish is the Diver's Den subsidiary of Live Aquaria. Their prices tend to be higher as a result, and even they tell you to qt all new fish purchased from them.

 

[lagatbezan]

nothing gets added to my tank without going through a full QT first. its cost less then $40 to set one up and at the end of the day well worth it (IMO).

 

[snorvich]

And...making sure the fish was at the LFS for a month before you bought it is likely to increase the chance of introducing ich into your system.

I cannot stress this enough. The longer a fish is at the LFS, the greater probability it will bring a parasite of some type with it.

The only large business that I know of that quarantines, acclimates and prophylactically treats all fish is the Diver's Den subsidiary of Live Aquaria. Their prices tend to be higher as a result, and even they tell you to qt all new fish purchased from them.

Divers Den does not quarantine fish! Their website says always quarantine fish purchased from them. If you do not quarantine, you will encounter a parasite eventually. Not running a quarantine protocol is like playing Russian Roulette: no one wins, some just get to play longer. And let me reinforce that ich is not the worst parasite by far, it is the least deadly.

 

[dkeller_nc]

Actually, they do (from their website, emphasis mine):

"Diver's Den® items are held, quarantined and shipped from our state-of-the-art Aquaculture Coral & Marine Life Facility in Rhinelander, Wisconsin."

But that doesn't change the conclusion - Diver's Den fish should still be quarantined by the receiving aquarist, and they recommend exactly that.

 

[zeebies]

I would never even consider running a reef without quarantining everything. I always prophylactically treat new fish with tank transfer (TT) and PraziPro and then continue observing for a total of 12 weeks. All corals, rock and inverts stay in a fishless QT for 12 weeks before going to the DT.

Always do your own quarantining regardless of where things come from.

Pay me now or pay me later...

 

[shermanator]

Actually, they do (from their website, emphasis mine):

"Diver's Den® items are held, quarantined and shipped from our state-of-the-art Aquaculture Coral & Marine Life Facility in Rhinelander, Wisconsin."

But that doesn't change the conclusion - Diver's Den fish should still be quarantined by the receiving aquarist, and they recommend exactly that.

FWIW, I recently got a ORA yellow assessor from Diver's Den that developed ich while in QT (which is why I now do TT prior to QT). The QT had been scrubbed and newly setup and no equipment shared. None of my other fish had or have ich, so I know it came from DD's system.

 

[Spar]

Actually, they do (from their website, emphasis mine):

"Diver's Den® items are held, quarantined and shipped from our state-of-the-art Aquaculture Coral & Marine Life Facility in Rhinelander, Wisconsin."

But that doesn't change the conclusion - Diver's Den fish should still be quarantined by the receiving aquarist, and they recommend exactly that.

the problem is the term "quarantine" has been bastardized and/or is misunderstood to great lengths. some people consider quarantine to include observation, and others only accept quarantine to include complete eradication of parasite/disease. there is pretty much zero chance they are doing the later. yet DD isn't defining what their degree of quarantine is.